In the quest to avoid soy, (which gives me sudden violent diarhea) I’ve had to give up almost all store bought baked goods. Damn that soy lechtitin, soy flour and soy oil. Last week I ate a pastry with all 3, the trifecta of death, and I didn’t make it halfway through the thing before I was rushing to the bathroom. When I saw the half eaten danish sitting on the counter after the hell bowel that ensued, I actually considered finishing it. I love danish that much.  Would the same food bother me without soy? Could I eat a danish and finish it without running to the toilet? Can I find a healthier for ME pastry? That’s when I discovered the answer: my local bakery!

Pastry is not a health food, lets be clear on that.  Most people agree that donuts are the dietary devil, and while the sugar and fat bomb inherent in a donut is less than ideal dietarily speaking, not all sweets are made equal. In particular I’m talking about the length of the ingredient list. If you ask your local friendly bakery they will tell you what ingredients are in their food (if they won’t, don’t eat there). The one I consulted had no problem opening their books and showing me the things they use in their food, things like flour, sugar, eggs, butter, yeast, baking soda, vanilla, that sort of thing. The kinds of things you’d expect. I toured their whole book and found the average ingredient list to be about 5-15 ingredients. Sadly some things did have soy in one form or another, but you know what they didn’t have: monosodium glutamate, mono and diglycerides, and a multitude of other many long named chemicals that I can’t begin to know.

I walked across the parking lot to Costco to get a cheap cake for my son’s birthday party. The cult of the inexpensive called me like a siren. I braved costco, went to the cake department to make the big choice: chocolate or vanilla. That’s when I saw the ingredient list and recoiled in horror. It had something like 80 things on it, many of the things were questionable in terms of their edibility. Weird stuff to make it colorful and shelf stable longer. They probably add something to give the buttercream that crisp texture that burns your mouth. No wonder I feel sick after eating that garbage. My jaw dropped and I left in horror. You could not pay me to feed that to my kid anymore. Now that I know. (uhg).

So I dragged my butt back across the parking lot and paid nearly twice as much for nearly half as much cake,and was never happier to do so. We make cupcakes at home (with short ingredient lists) and fed those to the kids whose pallets are not so discerning, while the adults indulged in the whipped cream iced, raspberry filled gorgeous vanilla cake made of a handful of simple ingredients. The adults all felt indulged, and why shouldn’t we, we were braving an 8 year old’s birthday party.

So great, I’m ruined for Costco cakes for life. Next time you’re in there, take a gander at the ingredient list. If you have the patience to read the entire thing out loud, go ahead and buy that cake. But if just reading the label exhausts you, imagine how exhausting it is to digest that shit. For me anyway.